Friday, February 07, 2003 at 12:54:20 (EST)
And You Will Know Us by clicking on the link BlogAmp is the box on the right side of the screen that says what I've been listening to recently. I've been messing with the javascript and found a better way to link the data. The guy who wrote it originally makes his songs link to the Pure Lyrics site, but that site must have changed the way it constructs its links, cuz it never produces anything when you click on a song. So I found a better site to link the songs to, so now if you click on a song, not only will you NOT see useless info about the bitrate, you will be taken to Yahoo's Launch site, which should provide more info about a given band/song. I'd rather link to the All Music Guide, currently the most comprehensive music info site I know, but their search functions in a way I can't easily figure out. So we're stuck with Launch, but at least it seems to work for many songs. I'm annoyed right now, because Me First & the Gimme Gimmes keeps coming up as Me First, a completely different band. Me First is cool enough, Lou Lenart's brother was in the band, but it's still not the right match. Someday, when the RIAA gets its head out of its ass, somebody will build a feature that will allow users to click on a BlogAmp song, and actually download it. Now THAT would be useful. But for the time being, it appears that such file sharing will remain the province of back alley apps and the ever-overlooked Usenet. Posted By Jimmy Legs
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	Thursday, February 06, 2003 at 18:12:55 (EST)
And now, something for the ladies ... Here's a flyer made from the detritus of our ill-advised "Trading Cards" endeavor. Of course, the band was a lot different in those days. Judging from this picture, I think we were some kind of Smiths cover band. Posted By Jimmy Legs
	And now ... BEEFCAKE!
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	Thursday, February 06, 2003 at 16:09:58 (EST)
I'm the James Montgomery Flagg of Athens Back in the little town in which I used to live, Athens, Ohio, they're having a retrospective of my artwork! Well, sort of. The local worker-owned Mexican restaurant, Casa Nueva, is having a show of flyer and poster art from local bands in the area. I don't think I'm being too modest to say that even though my band hasn't existed since 1999, there hasn't been much to hold a candle to the brilliant work I did in the medium of cut'n'paste. Ah, they're just flyers. But it was the love of flyers that spurred me on my way to learn how to work a computer, which led to making websites and learning the fundamentals of graphic design. Which of course, somehow led to my professional apogee: sitting in my room and waiting for HTML templates to propagate. Hooray. At any rate, my old bandmates still have a collection of my flyers, so they will be on display for the week in the Cantina. Maybe the local newspapers, The Post and The Athens News (both bastions of journalistic integrity) will cover the affair and then Harper's will print my flyers in their next issue, opposite Louis Latham's newest "We're all so fucked" essays. Here is one example from my Russian Constructivist phase: Posted By Jimmy Legs
	A few more of my old flyers here
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	Wednesday, February 05, 2003 at 12:08:51 (EST)
Getting ripped off again I called and canceled my credit card. While I was reporting the one incorrect charge I also noticed that on December 25th I was charged the same amount from another company call "Disc LD." So I alerted the Visa people to that as well. Then I called VoipTalk and they explained their 'service.' They purportedly sent me a prepaid calling card, and if I didn't 'cancel' the service within 30 days, I'd be charged for it. How do you cancel something you never asked for in the first place. They said I had made an online purchase and their offer was in it and I had clicked on "I Agree" or some such shit. I need to call them back to determine which company it was connected with. I suspect whichever company it was simply sold my credit card info to them outright. I found a site detailed all the other schmoes who have been hornswaggled by this company. They operate under several names but their methods all seem to be the same: one day you check your credit card statement and you have all these charges for no reason. I wonder if they really even sent me the card, since if they did I would have just thrown it out as junk mail. Ugh, I feel like a dope for not catching on more quickly. Posted By Jimmy Legs
	All the other people who got the shaft too
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	Wednesday, February 05, 2003 at 10:57:55 (EST)
What a deal, too bad I didn't order it So I'm checkig out my incedibly big Visa bill and I notice there's some charge on it from some company called "Voiptalk" (great name, huh?). I have no idea what this is, but it's another $60 on my bill. I Google the name and it turns out to be a long distance company that uses IP technology or something. Sound great, but I sure as hell didn't order it. I have a very adversarial relationship to the phone as it is, so the idea of me, on a whim, buying some special phone service in unlikely. So somebody's probably ripping me off. But if they are, they're doing it carefully. They're not going on some huge spending spree, something I'd notice right away. They're being quite cunning about it all. So I emailed the Voip people to ask them who is using my credit card. I hope they turn up a name and address, so I can make threatening phone calls and whatnot. I guess I should cancel the card too. Alas, it was only 4 months from expiration, too. He came so close. I can't wait to hear back from their phone hosers. Posted By Jimmy Legs
	VoipTalk, a lovely site and a reputable company.
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	Tuesday, February 04, 2003 at 18:00:56 (EST)
Now that's a dive Another crap day at home, that is to say, "work". A coworker showed me how to change my password through the VPN so the last shred of needing to be in the office was eviscerated. Actually, I know there is some kind of document waiting for me there, as someone recently asked me where my desk was so she could drop it off, but people gotta learn, if you can't email it, it doesn't exist! The password thing was great, but everything else sucked. These people in the UK and India keep hounding me to make sweeping yet not at all well-defined changes to their manual and it's pissing me off! They suckered me into saying I could everything done by Thursday before I realized to what extent I'd have to get involved. I remember now what was the one appealing thing about temp work: it was not permanent. There's nothing you can't do that ends quickly. Except for possibly sitting through Punch Drunk Love again. Sorry I keep harping on that. Congratulations to A for selling his 1979 Les Paul for way more dough than I ever thought he'd get for it. Ah, eBay! Now he can finally drive to Mexico and get a virulent intestinal bacteria! Now I'm waiting to see if J will contact me about boozing it up. I don't have the heart to tell him I lost his cell phone. Maybe he'll read this blog and call me. J: where do you wanna meet up? Brooklyn Inn? John St. Bar? Jackie's 5th Amendment? Posted By Jimmy Legs
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	Tuesday, February 04, 2003 at 09:37:24 (EST)
I'm always in the mood for free shots of whatever Saturday night we met some of B's friends at Rose's Turn, a bar whose waitstaff seems entirely made up of current and former Broadway hopefuls. Over the years, I've heard many a bartender/server whine about working in dives and dealing with drunks. But the folks in this joint really sing for their supper. One minute some woman is handing you cocktails, the next she's up under the makeshift stage, belting out "Heat Wave." Then after a few numbers, she's be right back taking your order. At some point she gave us free shots of something. I can't remember what it was, if that's any indication. I guess I'd never really been to a piano bar before, it sort of is like I imagined. Many Billy Joel tunes were played, many tip jars were passed around, many sexual puns were brought to bear. But the spirit of the place is so fun you don't mind the lamer songs, or the B&T/tourist crowd. I had hoped there would be some drag queens there, as they have been known to utilize the stage for their own purposes on occasion. But I was out of luck. Best of all I drank tons of gin and didn't have a hangover! Which pretty much proves that there is absolutely no rhyme or reason to my reaction to alcohol. I guess we had been out to dinner right before we were to the bar but I dunno how much difference that made. B was not as lucky as me, but she wasn't planning on going anywhere all day. I ended the weekend at the Alibi with A. Before we went to the bar I had him call up this very site on his Mac so I could see what it looked like. It looked like shit. The fonts were way too big and they were pushing the frames outta whack all over the place. I gotta assume he was using the text zooming feature in IE; I haven't been able to really duplicate it on any of my browsers. So people, it's up to you, you gotta tell me if something looks screwy. That's what that comment thing below is for! Posted By Jimmy Legs
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	Monday, February 03, 2003 at 00:58:20 (EST)
Ah, that's better So I broke down and registered a domain name. There were just too many annoyances with having a regular user account that I didn't wanna bother with anymore. So I signed up for cheep hosting so Jimmy Legs got a bit of a facelift. I will keep working on the design but after I make sure everything is where it's supposed to be and functional, I need to focus on figuring a different way to power this site, namely with PHP. Once ensconced in yet another programming language, or whatever you call it, I'm sure I won't have the troubles I've had with CGI of late. Even this new host is not all it's cracked up to be. Because it's cheep cheep cheep they don't let you have shell access, but I have worked around just about everything to bring you this near-perfect site. Some guys on a message board were suggesting I switch my format to Moveable Type or some other blog service. But as long as I can get this stuff to work, I staying indie. I need to find other people who do their own coding (or in my case, modifying of somebody else's code). When the web loses its DIY spirit, we're all screwed. I will probably run out of things to write about concerning my script errors and other fascinating HTML shoptalk soon. Then it's back to speculating about my friends' love lives! Posted By Jimmy Legs
	Now that's cheep, little birdie.
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